LETTER: A solution to slow police response times

With the recent left-wing trend for defunding the police, the average response time for 911 calls in major Democratic-controlled cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, San Francisco and Portland, Oregon, is 8 minutes, 48 seconds. This is an eternity if you’re the victim of a violent crime. As one prominent police chief said, “Unless you can protect yourself, the understaffed police will likely arrive in time to fill out the paperwork.”

By the same measure, the average Uber/Lyft booking to arrival time is 2 minutes, 26 seconds. Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has confirmed the legality of carrying a concealed weapon, I propose that the Biden administration divert the millions of taxpayer dollars it will likely spend fighting that decision into a program arming and training Uber/Lyft drivers to protect callers in peril. So if you’re pretty sure you can’t wait for the police and your own handgun is not readily available, you can call Uber. Tipping, of course, would be optional.